Posted on 12/20/2005 7:54:38 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
Fox News alert a few minutes ago says the Dover School Board lost their bid to have Intelligent Design introduced into high school biology classes. The federal judge ruled that their case was based on the premise that Darwin's Theory of Evolution was incompatible with religion, and that this premise is false.
Judge Jones is a George W. Bush appointee. The tyranny was the school board's.
Boy that sounds so similar to the creationist argument that no level of "proof" could convince them of their error, because they are just CERTAIN that they are correct.
If there is an all-powerful God, there is absolutely NOTHING known of evolution that can't completely be explained by God's actions, or that would be incompatable with a reading of a literal 6-day creation.
If God can create a human female out of a rib, He can create all the evidence of "evolution" needed to test the faith of his people.
I'm not arguing that He did, or He needs to, or even whether or not there is a reason to think it would have been done. I'm merely noting that your statement is inaccurate in the face of an all-powerful God.
Thank God for private schools.
Bingo.
Judicial tyranny? Dave, come on, I don't think you believe that that description applies in this case!
No. That would be the theory of phlogiston.
Please read post 159.
Man one/God zero.
And your proposal is to replace it with an unbending faith instead of further scientific enquiry? That's simply unacceptable.
Well, THAT sure sounds like a furthering of the scientific principle -- can't have any material critical of evolution in those science classes, since it is so OBVIOUS that any such material, however factually accurate, can only be introduced to further ID, since all real scientists wouldn't question anything about Evolution.
That statement is so bizarre that I actually doubt the ruling actually says it.
That doesn't preclude the probability that they have a common ancestor that is entirely a monkey. I'm certain that many of our ancestors both prior to and after the last monkey-human common ancestor would be categorized as monkeys if we could see them today.
It's obviously true that the last common ancestor between chimps and humans was unarguably an ape. Consider: the last common ancestor of orangutans and the other apes existed before the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimps, and humans, which in turn existed before the last common ancestor of chimps and humans. So in order to say that the last ape-human common ancestor existed before there were any apes, you'd have to believe that orangutans, gorillas, and chimps somehow independently evolved into apehood sometime after the humans split off. That's ridiculous, hence, man evolved from ape.
Because there aren't any scientific ones.
There are plenty of creation myths that could be taught. But this shouldn't be the biology curriculum.
You are very correct.
As demonstrated during the last 150 years, evolution cannot be defeated, simply because it's true. Thus it is a waste of time for culture warriors to try.
There are a great many things Christians should be fighting for in the political realm, but attacks on evolution merely marginalize anyone making the attempt, and do more damage by shooting your own foot than to evolution.
Peer review? Hahahahaha
" ...In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. We can take as an example the scientific reception accorded a Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist.
The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University Press, was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all right-thinking scientists should shun the press. The past president of the AAAS wondered aloud how Cambridge could have ever "published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review." )But of course the manuscript did pass peer review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and all recommended publication.) But what are scientists doing attacking a press? Is this the new McCarthyism-coming from scientists?
Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to?
When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down.
Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic.
Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church.
Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggressively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science." ~
Michael Crichton ( Excerpted from his lecture at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA - January 17, 2003 )
It isn't that I disagree with the premise of your solution, but should that even be necessary? Do you really think that parents of schoolchildren should expect anything different? I mean really, I don't know of any sane person who expects that schools (public, not parochial) teach faith and morals.
Thank God my Catholic high school bio teacher (who was a nun) taught us evolution.
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